It’s official. The hot buzz word in higher ed this year is MOOC. This stands for Massive Online Open Course. It’s a new type of online class where you have thousands of people in each class and they take it for free (or very low cost). Up till now, you usually didn’t get any kind of certification from it either so it’s been more of casual learning. After about a year of MOOCs, I think I can start to see how it will change the education system. Let me lay out a few starting conditions.

It’s clear that most universities have decided they can’t just ignore this new medium. Many schools are now starting up online programs or joining online providers such as Coursera. The barriers to entry have dropped dramatically. What this tells me is we are going to see a flood of online courses in the next few…